Before entering the above command I checked, and /mnt/sdb1 did in fact exist.
I had chosen to make partition type c=W95 FAT32 (LBA).
Hope this was the correct choice.

proebler:
Will now reboot into Mint, and look for Disk Utility.
Done: No Disk Utility in Accessories!
Will make new Mint=Debian-xfce bootable DVD-RW, and try in there.
Got a link for the Debian-xfce iso file?

The partition table has fields for both CHS and LBA values. If CHS values are used, they should agree with the LBA values. The CHS values on your partition table do not agree with the LBA values.

If you are unfamiliar with the terms "CHS" and "LBA", you can read the next three paragraphs for a brief explanation. But you don't really need to know what they mean, so may skip ahead if you like.

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Partition tables contain the information needed to find the starting sector and the ending sector of each partition. There are two ways of doing this.

The older way was to specify the cylinder, head, and sector (CHS). So a sector was identified by where it physically lived on the disk. That way requires knowing how many sectors were on each track of the cylinder and how many heads there were. As drives got bigger it became impossible to fit the actual cylinder number into the ten-bit field allowed for it, so a bit of poetic license was used to allow bigger drives, like specifying head numbers greater than the actual number of heads. Nowadays these numbers rarely refer to actual cylinders and heads. This is clearly the case for your flash drive, which has no physical cylinders or heads.

The newer way of doing things is to just identify each sector with a number, instead of by where it lives on the drive. This is known as "Logical Block Addressing" (LBA).
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Normally, Linux only uses the LBA values, so I am a little surprised by the "CHS and LBA don't match" error message. Perhaps instead of simply ignoring the CHS values, something has noticed that they don't match and assumes that the partition is not really a type b FAT partition.

Two questions:

1. When did you see that error message? (Clicking on the icon? Using pmount? Using the mount command? Using some other utility and/or another non-Puppy operating system? Using gparted? Using fdisk? Something else?)

2. Do you still get that error message, and does it still say "Incorrect number of heads/cylinder 255 (FAT) !=32 (HD)", or have those values changed?

Anyway, some utility seems to have put bad values in the CHS fields. That utility assumed that the drive had 255 heads and 63 sectors per track (not actual physical heads and tracks, of course) -- those numbers are commonly used for large drives, since they are the maximum allowed for CHS, but your drive is not so large, and fdsik indicates that it has 196 heads and 9 sectors per track. So the utility got the values wrong.

Probably the easiest way to fix this is to change your drive type from type b (W95 FAT32) to type c (W95 FAT32 (LBA)), which uses Logical Block Addressing, and so the CHS values should be ignored.

I know that you intended to set the type to c earlier, but both "fdisk -l" and the raw partition table show that it is still b.

1. Run fdisk /dev/sdb

2. Press p then Enter to and look to make sure it is working on your flash drive ("Disk /dev/sdb: 1010 MB, 1010826752 bytes . . ."). (If not, press q then Enter to quit, and tell us what it said.)

3. Press t then Enter to prepare to change the type.

4. Press 1 then Enter to choose partition 1.

5. Press c then Enter to set type c.

6. Press p then Enter and look to ensure that the Id column says c and the System column says "W95 FAT32 (LBA)" (If not, press q then Enter to quit, and tell us what it said.)

npierce:
1. "When did you see that error message?"
Oh dear, I can only try to remember and guess.
Might have been in Testdisk, or Gparted, or Pmount->fdisk, or Falconfour's UBCD->XP->CheckDisk.
Hey, I notice I reported in the title, that it was TestDisk that gave that report.

2. "Do you still get that error message?"
I'd need to attempt to retrace my steps and see if I encounter that message again.
Is that really necessary?

Then entered w to write, and the console closed.
Should it do that?
Would that write only take effect after a reboot WITH SAVE of the session changes?
I notice that when I re-run "System->Pdisk->fdisk" on sdb1, and enter the command p, the Id=b and System=w95 FAT32!
In full:

4. "The CHS values on your partition table do not agree with the LBA values.
Might we attempt to change so as to correct the CHS values?
Can you give me instructions to follow?

amigo:
5. "What exact command did you use to format the drive? (mkdosfs...)"
Originally, I used Gparted to reformat [the existing partition] from EXT3 to FAT32.
Then, through the course of this thread I've followed various instructions...
[And reported back on those]
Rather parrot fashion...
Since most are beyond my understanding.
Did any of those include yet another reformat?
GParted always reports a failure to reformat.
Also reports failure to delete the partition.

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